i stopped believing stupid journalist hype ever since they scammed me into buying gta4 on pc at launch, bunch of fkn scammers is what they are. devs pay these whores to prop any review they like and then customers pay these loosers with their hard earned money while some indie dev is struggling to stay alive.

I'm pretty sure that the first rocket seems to hit the edge of the bridge and explodes (or at least seems to explode) and then still registers as a direct hit on the opponent, who is on the ground and not even near where the first explosion was shown. I'm not sure if something similar happens with the second shot, or if it just looks that way because the opponent's rocket explodes at the same time.

But remember when QL changed to hit cylinders with "correct" size and only strenx and DaHang were hitting good shaft? Some people were happy. It's just more emphasis on aim compared to other skills.

But when they added just 10% more volume to that cylinder, I think everyone was happy, including the good aimers - it just made the game more fun.

Of course in QC where everyone runs around with 100 hp (compared to 300 in QL) and dies to a single random rocket... there's not much fun to be had for most, even if they allow me to hit Anarki every now and then :/

What we see here is the client and server disagreeing on when the shot took place or where the crosshair was pointing (depending how you look at it).

So this is again Quake Live's hit detection (and previously CPMA's, and previously, UFT's "unlagged"), also implemented in QW by qqshka iirc.

This implementation happened because those games' clients only send packets containing "I'm looking at (x,y)" and "I have +attack pressed". There's no way for a client to say "I fired a rail from (x1,y1,z1) to (x2,y2,z2)" or to say "I shot right at enemy model". So to keep compatibility with all existing clients, they independently implemented client-drawn weapon shots (fakeshaft, truelightning etc.) and server-side "rewinding" of state history to see if crosshair was pointed at enemy when player pushed fire. This was controversial for a second (getting hit behind a wall, hard to dodge if you don't know when enemy fires), and hehe, actually is still disputed by Weird, but most of us agreed this was the best possible solution without altering network protocol and netcode.

Of course in QL they have changed the protocol several times, but only to add some flags, the actual netcode was still Q3 (we loved that, as it made it trivial to keep working WolfcamQL, QLDT and stuff).

However, QC has several advantages which should have removed this legacy work-around:

1. QC is a completely new game, is supposed to have fresh 2017 netcode and hit detection. It's supposed to be actively developed from scratch, overseen by people who know all the stuff that was a problem in QL and older games - so it shouldn't repeat the same mistakes :)

2. QC sends a packet _every_frame_. This means that unlike any game with capped pps (which is every other game ;)), the server should NEVER get false information of where you were pointing when the shot was made. This is because when the client decides to draw a rail trail, same frame's packet will include information of the shot being fired at exactly that spot. HOWEVER - and I hope this was the case in above clip - if a packet was lost, the server probably used the next packet (with +attack still pressed but crosshair now pointing at enemy) for hit detection. IF this happens only with packet loss, I wouldn't be as afraid. But there's no guarantee, and also that guy doing "netcode analysis" (while not testing most important stuff, or actual netcode) postulates for pps limit, so they're probably introducing that in an update, so we'll see this happen more.

3. QC is a 2017 game, half the FPS nowadays use client-side hit detection (client can send a packet saying "I shot that guy and he was right at the center of my crosshair, please register a hit" and a game server runs basic checks if this was probable or even possible, and registers the hit). Such trust in a client was obviously making it easier for cheat authors in the past, but cheats evolved since 1999, so nowadays this doesn't make any difference in practice.

So in essence, this should have never happened in QC.

Also there's the problem that makes all the rockets being drawn by the client, even if the server thinks they were shot FROM a different place that the client thinks.

And both issues (1. where the shot originated and 2. where it's pointed) combine with client drawing all weapons how it thinks they should shoot/fly. This then causes people to see direct hits or rail shots that don't register, or shoot walls but still get frags.

And when you learn the game and train your muscle memory on how to shoot, you need to get correct visual feedback about what's actually happening.

Full server authoritative lag compensation is not some thing of the past.

Reflex does not use the client's opinion either or any server-side plausibility testing. It works much better than QC. I think it is one of the best systems. It makes a nice compromise between CPMA and QL. QC's problems are in the implementation rather than that method in general.

Client side with plausibility testing has problems of its own. The stronger the testing, the closer it is to full server authoritative anyway, and then the client's opinion is irrelevant.

QC just often has a lot more lag in the mix than you'd expect given server tickrate and network latency. The fact the data rate is so high is an indication of its general inefficiency.

Things like faking rockets weren't ever a must-have in previous Quakes because they didn't have that problem.

I'm in a very small camp that thinks movement should be server authoritative (never allow for warping, if necessary rubber band people on bad connections, it's their problem to fix) but hit detection doesn't have to.

Whatever awesome work-around Reflex has, if it's between QL and CPMA, it's both of them, because they are both the same in the unlag department, actual difference seems to be allowed limits of timenudge and how good it is at correcting mispredictions due to extrapolation [I don't have to point out which of the two is the bad one ;)].

Note however what I mention first:

There's no way for a client to say "I fired a rail from (x1,y1,z1) to (x2,y2,z2)"

This is different from client authoritative hit detection, which you are needlessly against. You can still use your rewinding to check if enemy was there, but at least you can't get the wrong idea of where the client was shooting at/from. Again, plausability test is necessary, so I assume you disagree in principle, but I don't see any way for this making things worse than current QC :)

And why I think you don't need to be against client-side hit detection? Because any computer program designed to satisfy the requirements of server-side part (read: a cheat) will always be better than humans at doing so.

Any cheat will instantly adapt to any silly condition (taking data from a frame after, frame before, always pointing a pixel to the left, whatever), as its author can easily add the new silly requirement to the code and forget about it. Meanwhile humans will need to re-learn aiming.

Things like faking rockets weren't ever a must-have in previous Quakes because they didn't have that problem.

Good point. I loved how they bragged about rocket exiting the barrel much faster than in QL:

Except in QL rocket shows up when the server replies "yeah I see you shooting, your rocket is now flying here" and in QC it's basically input lag, as the client draws the rocket before it's actually fired.

Now, if only it could let the server know where it was fired from and where it was flying at, then you could make sure the trajectory is the same on the client and server, so drawing it client side wouldn't be a big issue (we can accept seeing stuff that didn't happen because we died, it's easier to understand, too).

And this is not making hit detection client-authoritative - only tying three communication channels that are now not in sync (1. where the client thinks it is 2. where is the crosshair pointing, 3. when player pushes fire).

Those are values that are already transmitted and validated by the server - but it constantly mixes them up, as evidenced by countless clips in this thread.

That I'm for also transmitting "oh yeah, and there was enemy under the crosshair, too" is another discussion :)

I'm not sure what you mean by server-authoritative movement. If I understand you, I'm in the same camp. Warp is reduced by adaptively buffering player input on the server, which increases their effective lag when their ping jitters, and by inventing input when their input is lost.

I'm not sure how you reconcile this with the client deciding where the player is standing at the time he fired.

When you favour the client's view, you screw other players over in that instance if there is a difference between the client and what the other players see. Do you really want more people shooting you from where they don't appear to be because their net was bad or because their client didn't know about some knockback or collision yet?

But at the end of the day, this will be a matter of taste. Pick your poison.

And actually I think what looks like failed hit reg caused by client mispredictions of your own position is pretty unusual anyway (unless your ping is really garbage), at least in say QL, which never transmits player position to the server.

I'm not needlessly against client-side hit detection. It has problems like any other solution, including things like hard-to-detect proxy aimbots injecting hit signals; hit signals being sent when the client's net is failing because the enemy is paused on their screen for a moment; client extrapolation becoming authoritative; and inability to accurately limit the amount of effective BR.

These things help that client at the expense of other players.

That's the reason the decision is still made not to use it. No Quake uses it, despite the fact the tech is not new in any way. CS:GO (Source engine) does not use it, and I've seen no evidence that even OW does.

If you use a plausibility test and it is weak (like line of sight), it's not much good. If it is strong, then the client's view is not needed anyway, and the benefits aren't there. Maybe there is a sweet spot in there, but a good implementation without any of that complication seems to perform well enough.

QC is not a good example of how well such a system can perform. Reflex is better. Extrapolation and misprediction is not the end of the world if it happens rarely. Sometimes missing a shot that looked like it should have hit (or vice versa) is not worse than some of the other problems created when you make a system 100% geared to making sure that does not happen.

People will take turns screwing each other over in whichever scenario the netcode favours. But at least if the problem is at your client, you might be able to do something about it.

Extrapolation worked well in CPMA to the point that there was endless whine about how well HPBs could hit. Reflex meets the BR crowd halfway by only extrapolating by half the ping and using BR for the rest. That way there is a compromise between compensating for the symptoms of lag for both the attacker and dodger.

You're never gonna get a perfect system, but I think that system works pretty well. QC is no showcase of it.

Not really feeling inclined to get into an endless ESR debate about this if that's what you're looking for. Just my two cents. :D

Forward-rocket on QL screenshot is also because in quake engines rockets are instantly advanced 50ms when fired, making them effectively hitscan at short distance. This is why quake players often feel that rocket launcher is "lagged" in other games.

Personally I always really liked Reflex' netcode, but lately I've been hearing some good players who spent a lot of time with expplus claim that it deals badly with knockback, which is a pretty severe drawback since it essentially limits the game balance around a technical issue (rockets can't have too much knockback). I don't have any proof other than their word.

Much better than the one carnage was demonstrating above, very useful trick at 0:00 (repeated at 5:08) and really cool one at 5:55 - going from heavy armor to mega in 2 seconds on dm6 is pretty good result, imo.

(He jokingly shares teju's view that every exploitable bug quickly becomes a skill to be learned in a Quake game :))

it's pretty crazy that all that shit exists (not that surprising, esports ready) but it's even more crazy this chap has found all that stuff, must have taken more effort than is actually being used on the game development

Basically everything is the exact opposite of what they said: FPS is worse despite "optimizations", options for coloring and delayed load on demand are mentioned in patch notes but absent in the game, nothing hits, everything rubber bands on ping 20 (my 600 Mbps bandwidth is not enough after they fixed the packet rate), all you hear is your own centipede footsteps... they finally made it unplayable even for pub stomping \o/

Edit: but hey, there's a Razer Chroma option, whatever that is. And you can see people's name plates and distinguish which of the fantastic bundles are on sale! Reminds me of QL when they tweaked respawn time to show a 2x1 ad while everything else was lacking, but at least that game was playable the whole time.

after a few games today i feel like some of the changes are actually good, anarki dodge change is an improvement and it APPEARS doomslayer is easier to hit - although that could be because everyone else is rubberbanding too?! and i'm for sure experiencing less 0 damage rockets, although still plenty of times where they don't do as much damage as they should.

the netcode and fps deterioration are unacceptable, sometimes i can barely strafe jump because it's constantly doing small rubberbandy type things (although I personally don't experience any more fps drops than before this latest patch, but i understand most do)

and is that flashing keyboard thing the new razer option in the menu? wtf.. surely they could spend more time fixing the issues than adding stuff like that?

So I'm raging because I use mouse accel and it's fps-dependent hence constantly jumping randomly due to all the drops. Game has 50 threads running and can't do mouse input independent of the renderer in 2017.

BUT! Turned out even the firing rate depends on client FPS :D

(If only the game could keep over 120 FPS and not drop to 40 every 2 seconds on my GTX 980, sure, it's previous generation but still a monster doing constant 200 FPS in Doom 4... Oh yeah, id Software engines are actually decent!)

At first I thought so, but then decided it couldn't have been the rocket. The rocket was flying to the right of the armor, there's no way it hit Anarki few meters away. Also, the damage plum appeared exactly when the rail was shot, further convincing me it was a 10 damage rail instead ;)

Yeah, that actually makes sense. That rail was really dead on, but we're used to the glorious hit detection of QC, so that was a miss.

So instead it was a new spectator "feature": he used the acid spit while having the protection, at which point protection effect on the weapon disappeared and no acid came out and no pools appeared on the floor either.

Also, considering ~1 in 10 nails do 14 damage, exactly like plasma did 14 damage in QL... I'm now convinced this is in fact QL with different renderer, and not a completely new engine :D

Further evidence is the fact that people can warp in this game, which was a Q3 engine "feature" (function updating player's position was triggered by incoming packets) and I don't think anyone would do it this way writing new netcode from scratch in 2016, right? Right?

Except there was no frag, no hit beep, no damage plum, even though he was awarded a medal as if it's a hit, and that came after a long delay. Because it's acceptable to wait a second for feedback from the server on ping 20.

Not the only defense. The game on its own is a lot of fun. With working netcode similar to any other fps, I would prefer QC.

The bugged netrcode implementation (like, dependent on fps, dependent on upload, ) gives plenty of WTF moments and hinders the solid feeling of a competitive game imo.

This is no. 1 issue.

The balance, game modes etc. are no. 2 for sure. If it feels solid, people, especially in the top will pick it up and embrace it - because it's Quake.
If QC can reach a broad audience, that depends a lot more on the no.2 stuff though. imo.

Ultimate proof that a pro player's mind works 10x faster than mine. I'd need at least 10 seconds to start thinking of how to weaponize this. Meanwhile, the same thought process happens INSTANTLY (or continuously!) in a pro's mind :)

someone pasted a couple of twitch clips into the discard channel showing how fucked up the desync is and syncerror came back with "but that's eu vs na". anyone who actually watched the clips could see the players had 10-50 ping (both clips were cooller/yorsh vs raphang). although to be fair he did say he would pass it on to someone else in the dev team...

In their defense, this is super rare and happens only on specific servers (except the Bullrush hitting you twice if they bump you into something). If you have a high end system, you can have a good time in QC.

And again in their defense (I can't believe I'm actually doing this), This is a week after CTF's release and the double flag bug is reportedly fixed internally. QL had a similar problem initially, and all kinds of other stuff (some of which migrated right to QC, like SNG aka PG doing splash damage on direct hits :D). I mean, if you were able to live with it in QL, this is nothing new :)

I remember, we were there together in focus group , but iirc it was only graphics, you couldn't cap twice. Anyways, that would be even worse tbh, not learning from fundamental mistakes again.

QL was horrible for many years (seriously it was one of the worst games I ever played durring early alpha days, and I was alpha/beta tester for a lot of shit games), but it had a solid engine at least, an engine what they could build on (even if they built a pile of crap on it first).
QC was broken beyond repair from day one, and I can't force myself to take its shit for years again when I have the good old and polished Quake games which will be always better in every aspect (perhaps graphics can be an exception, but not sure, since I really dislike the style and the UT look of QC)

Or perhaps I'm just too old and grumpy when it comes to QC, but it hurst to see a Quake game in a hopeless state like that. I hope I didn't offend anyone:)

dunno what you're talking about... QL was just missing features early on that were there in CPMA/OSP but were not in Q3 originally (for instance model colors, crosshair customization, team overlays etc.). Which made it inferior to the modded Q3 versions that were out there.
QL was never horrible to play though as it started from Q3.
The bugs that did arise were due to stuff the new dev team added and were thus easy to fix as well.
Strangely enough many of these features are still missing from QC or are 'advanced' to a point that make them ridiculous. (for example seeing your teammates through walls)

It was an inferior version of the already decade old vanilla quake 3 at times when the modded quake3 (osp, cpma, etc) versions - which the community played - were lightyears ahead.
It only had the original maps, it was choppy, extremely buggy, felt shit and the plugin crashed a lot (wish we could access the original forum, the first one)
Later on, things got a lot better ofc, I was talking about the early days.

No wonder I bookmarked this thread in my gaming folder, it just keeps delivering the most cringeworthy entertainment while preventing me from giving QC another chance after uninstalling in September 2017.

Can't say for sonic, but I'd rather see people playing and complaining about the bugs (to give them visibility / get them fixed faster) than stop playing completely.

If you left in September 2017, you'd be surprised how much it improved from that atrocity :) I have a really good time in ranked 2v2. But I always loved 2v2 and this is basically classic 2v2 (5 second weapons, no item timers, just some totem shooting mixed in).

Duel with rounds and CTF on TDM maps with half-time... well, that's still retarded, so if you're a duel or CTF player, don't bother :)

tbh besides a minor increase in FPS stability the game is worse now than it was in december 2017... Don't quite remember how it was in september though but I would heavily doubt that the game plays better now than it did back then.

When you are playing the game yourself those bugs are annoying and rageworthy, when you aren't playing the game and spectate the trainwreck from the sideline they are funny and amusing.
For you this thread might have a bug report aspect, for me it is just comedy about how shit QC is.
On last sunday I watched some of Toxjq's previous QC stream and boy is the clientside hitdetection awesome. Toxjq played Xron on bloodrun, runs through the teleporter at RL, from his point of view you can see him exiting the teleporter, just right before he gets rubberbanded back to die infront of the teleporter entrance. Just great, if you liked unlagged warpers in QL, you will love clientsided warpers in QC.
But the most retarded moment for me was on another map, as Toxjq's Strogg-drone was fighting an automated Eisen-turret. Drone vs. turret, that is Quake in 2019.

I only tried 2v2 TDM in Q4 and it was an excellent mode, it is less chaotic to play/spectate than 4v4 while still having the team-coordination-aspect and by far more entertaining to spectate than duel's boring item farming while putting enough emphasis on a player's individual skill. For me it was the perfect middleground between 4v4 and 1v1. How 2v2 didn't become the major competitive mode is still beyond me, but instead we ended up with 4v4 formats where the few top players formed in 2-3 teams to easily roflstomp the rest of the field.

I enjoyed CTF, FFA and in the last months of activity 1v1 in QL, none of those I consider playable in QC.
Take QC-CTF for example: One single map, asymmetric of course, 6436747 ups vs. 320 ups, 15-dmg-hmg, damn abilities, too high teamsize for maximum chaos and a netcode that enables things like double flags.
With the current state of QL and QC, (unless you get paid for playing) quitting is the only sane choice.There are far more enjoyable games to waste time on.

But I still like to visit Quake's community every semester holiday to check out how dead the game has become, laugh about the horrible game design spiced up with bugs they play in a serious manner, get amused about their delusional expectations for the game's future and look down on those retards.
That is Sadism.

It doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Seems like all the maps allow ring-outs or death to the environment. The same thing could always have happened at the heavy armour on blood covenant, for example.

Yep, telefrags (which rarely can be considered anything but bad luck), but there was always death to the environment even in duel since Quake 1. QL cleaned things up a bit, I guess, but you could still die in lava on TDM maps.

It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but knowing the risk of taking fights in those locations can be considered part of the skill, and QC in general has a lot more randomness, so I don't think it goes against their philosophy.

Technically not instant death on dm13, but for all intents and purposes, it's the same thing really: you're down a frag because of "bad luck" (or otherwise significantly set back). If you're forced to take a fight there at a bad time, your opponent has probably done something right.

Quake has always had that randomness (from turning a corner and eating a spam rocket in the face, to shit like spawn killing); they've just ramped it up a bit in QC for the sake of noobs getting some frags and having upsets in tournaments, which I guess some people find more exciting.

It seems they actually made it much less random than it was before with the nerfing of all the abilities. Rapha has still managed to get to his 3415 duel elo as of now, so it can be managed. :D